Folk News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Activision has revealed the Twitch drops for the Modern Warfare 3 beta.

It’s a funny thing when you follow an indie game from its initial announcement to its release. I’d say it’s an equally funny thing when you live in ignorance throughout an indie game’s development, only finding out about it when a release trailer is posted. In the case of Knuckle Sandwich, developed by Andy Brophy, I think there will be a fair amount of both column ‘A’ and column ‘B’ when the game drops in November.

Loki season 2 scripts were already written when Marvel casting director Sarah Halley Finn saw an early screening of Everything Everywhere All at Oncein 2022. It was March 2022, the movie was just about to go nationwide and take over the film landscape for the next several months, and she was positive they had to snap up Ke Huy Quan. Fast.

Transcripts of analyst-facing conferences, held by multi-billion dollar organisations, are usually terminally dull affairs. But a recent Intel chat contains a wee snippet we can add to the rumour fire about when the next version of Windows is due. And in this particular case, Intel is hinting that it's definitely next year.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is the latest in Ubisoft’s blockbuster series, and a bit of a throwback to an earlier time for the series. Rather than a big overstuffed RPG, Mirage is more of a traditional action-adventure experience, and as such, some folks more used to recent games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Valhalla may need to adjust slightly.

The developers behind the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 have revealed a few details on how the new Create-a-Class system, which is all about picking a tactical vest and stuffing it full of the gear you want.

Detective Pikachu isn’t the only live-action Pokemon offshoot in existence. There’s also a Japanese TV series on the way, but don’t expect to see more CG-animated Pokémon waltzing about in this one. Per Crunchyroll news, Pocket ni Boken o Tsumekonde — Pack Your Pockets with Adventure, or PokéTsume for short —is a Pokemon-inspired drama that aims to mine a very specific type of nostalgia. In particular, nostalgia aimed at folks who grew up on the original Game Boy and the first Pokemon games. 

Blizzard hosted the first of their two Devstreams regarding the upcoming Diablo 4 Season 2, Season of the Blood, yesterday. And, I have to say…it was actually pretty good. In the trove of quality-of-life changes and enhancements coming to the ARPG, a buff to the drop rate of Uber Uniques was mentioned. Diablo Designer Joe Shely followed up on Twitter afterward confirming the buffed drop rate.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is the latest in Ubisoft’s blockbuster series, and a bit of a throwback to an earlier time for the series. Rather than a big overstuffed RPG, Mirage is more of a traditional action-adventure experience, and as such, some folks more used to recent games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Valhalla may need to adjust slightly.

"What I am about to show you is, in my opinion, the future of video game graphics," Corridor Crew says as it shows a highlight reel of weirdly smooth humans caked in AI makeup.

Unpack your sniper rifle and garrote, folks, as we have some exciting news for you. Feral Interactive, the team behind the excellent mobile ports of XCOM 2, Rome: Total War, and Grid Autosport is at it again. This time, it’s the murderous classic, Hitman: Blood Money.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is the latest in Ubisoft’s blockbuster series, and a bit of a throwback to an earlier time for the series. Rather than a big overstuffed RPG, Mirage is more of a traditional action-adventure experience, and as such, some folks more used to recent games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Valhalla may need to adjust slightly.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is the latest in Ubisoft’s blockbuster series, and a bit of a throwback to an earlier time for the series. Rather than a big overstuffed RPG, Mirage is more of a traditional action-adventure experience, and as such, some folks more used to recent games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Valhalla may need to adjust slightly.

Remember Gigantic? Gearbox Publishing certainly does. And it looks like the company is hoping fans of the doomed hero shooter do as well. The company sent emails to some former Gigantic players, inviting them to come together once more for a “limited time throwback event.”

Despite being seven years old – practically an eternity in hardware terms – the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 has got a new lease of life thanks to AMD FSR 3. Team red’s new, open-source upscaler isn’t officially recommended for any Nvidia graphics card older than its GeForce RTX 2000-series GPUs, but it seems to work just fine with them anyway.

Square Enix has clarified the correct pronunciation of Final Fantasy 7 character Cait Sith.

Yesterday I had a lovely chat with the brainy folk of Oxide Games, developers of Ashes of the Singularity and the forthcoming Ara: History Untold, a historical 4X strategy game that puts a baroque spin on the classic Civilization format with each player's turn unfolding simultaneously once you've queued up a bunch of commands.

Suit up, folks; PowerWash Simulator VR is heading to Meta Quest headsets in just under a month's time.

If a new patch adds in a bug, no matter how small, the Pokemon community will find it. This one is a tad bigger than a mere annoyance though, as Pokemon Scarlet & Violet version 2.0.1 (which arrived for the Teal Mask DLC) apparently added in a hardware crash.

Nvidia DLSS 3.5, the latest addition to team green’s upscaling suite, has brought us an exciting, new feature calling Ray Reconstruction. Until now, the implementation of Ray Reconstruction in Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 has been limited to the taxing RT Overdrive mode, something the majority of GPUs can’t manage. But a new hack promises to bring Ray Reconstruction to the masses.

Warner Bros Montreal's one-four-all superhero spin-off Gotham Knights hits Game Pass today. In his RPS review, Ed Thorn described it as "an action-RPG that wraps what could've been a wonderfully realised Gotham universe in a tired, slapdash mix of meaningless numbers and loot." I reviewed it myself as a freelancer and can't disagree with his verdict. Game ain't great. But I find myself itching to download and revisit this muddled open world contender all the same.

The Xbox Game Pass subscription service is rather popular. It’s a subscription service that allows players to gain access to a wide collection of video games for a monthly fee. It’s certainly one of the must-have services if you’re on the latest-generation Xbox Series X/S consoles. With this subscription service, you can access all of Microsoft’s first-party video game titles that launch. This is also an excellent saving if you’re keen on some of their big title releases, like last month’s Starfield from the folks over at Bethesda. 

Hunt: Showdown is getting a native PS5 version in April 2024, developer Crytek has announced, along with an engine upgrade in line with the next CryEngine update. These technical ambitions and more were revealed in a lengthy roadmap video outlining the changes to come, which includes the cessation of support for the PS4 iteration of the game. Previously, a 60 frames-per-second patch was released for PS4; this new version would allow 4K visuals, along with enhanced controller support and input upgrades.

The folks at EA and DICE have been teasing the contents of the next Battlefield 2042 season for some time now, and now they’ve dropped a first trailer and full release date. Battlefield 2042 is entitled “Dark Creations” and will introduce a new moody close-quarters combat map, the usual assortment of new weapons and cosmetics, and more.

One of the best things about Sea of Thieves is the lurking spectre of danger in every encounter: Is that rapidly-approaching brigantine looking to team up, or looking for a fight? But not everyone cares for my particular brand of «excitement,» and for those folks developer Rare is adding a new game mode called Safer Seas that will enable players to sail the high seas alone or with a chosen group of friends.

Moonring is a turn-based RPG made by a former Fable designer and it's now free to play on Steam.

A veteran game designer has gone and released a full-on top-down dungeon crawling, open world, old school Ultima-style RPG with a boatload of modern conveniences for the low, low price of absolutely free. Moonring is a really simple to get into retro-RPG with some neat systems and a fun world to explore where five moons represent the five gods, each of whom chooses and guides humans—except for those like you, the dreamless, who must choose their own destiny.

Sad tidings, folks. Today is vid bud Liam Richardson's last day at RPS. After a glorious eighteen months of photoshopping creepy smiles onto thumbnails and making a staggering 125 videos about our beloved PC games, Liam is returning to the world from whence he came: the wild frontiers of software design. It's been a pleasure having him, even if but for a brief window of time, and I invite you all to come and bid him a fond farewell below.

After months of rumors, Sony officially announced their Remote-Play-focused handheld the PlayStation Portal back in August, and now players can put down their money on the device. Coming in at $200, folks in the US can order the PlayStation Portal from retailers like Amazon, GameStop, and Sony’s own PlayStation Direct store. Those in the UK can also grab it from Amazon or the PlayStation Direct store, as well as from Game. In unknown how plentiful PlayStation Portal stock will be, but if you want to get one at launch, it’s best to pre-order early.

Epic Games has said Mediatonic’s work on Fall Guys remains a “company priority” following reports that the UK studio had been hit hard by layoffs.

Finally, Truck Driver: The American Dream is here to bring us the one thing that American Truck Simulator was missing: a robust story campaign filled with human drama.

The Binding of Isaac is actually getting online multiplayer, 12 whole years after it originally launched.

It looks like cheating doesn’t pay, and Valve is out to prove it in Counter-Strike 2. In its first set of patch notes, Valve doesn’t mince words; it’s banning cheaters and penalizing parties caught benefiting from their activities.

Fortnite and Unreal Engine maker Epic Games has confirmed that it is laying off approximately 830 employees, representing roughly 16% of Epic's total workforce.

Unreal Engine and Fortnite publisher Epic Games are making an absolutely enormous round of job cuts. As announced by founder and CEO Tim Sweeney in an email to staff today, the company will lay off approximately 830 people, totalling “around 16%” of their workforce, in order to achieve “financial sustainability” following a period of heavy investment and lower-than-hoped returns from Fortnite.

Netflix hosted a Drop 01 livestream today, taking the opportunity to tease the Devil May Cry animated series. Capcom’s action series is coming to Netflix, with Castlevania producer Adi Shankar and Studio Mir (My Adventures with Superman) on board.

Some within the Starfield community were surprised to learn that rain only ever falls on the player this week after a Reddit post revealing the normally unseen trick saw nearly 30,000 upvotes.

Fortnite typically runs events or random mixups every few weeks, and this current content drop includes a fan favorite. Star Wars has been heavily factoring into Fortnite‘s event schedule for a while, and now Ahsoka Tano, star of Clone Wars/Rebels and her recent titular show, is a playable character/skin.

One of the nifty features of Google Bard is the ability to share chatbot conversation links with other people, which folks can use to continue talking with Bard.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty officially drops today, and while Wccftech has covered the expansion’s PC technical chops, how does it measure up on current-gen consoles? Cyberpunk 2077 was originally kind of a mess on consoles, so it’s a question that begs answering. Thankfully, the folks at Digital Foundry have given Phantom Liberty and the recent Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 update for a spin, and the results are fairly good, although not without some drawbacks. You can check out Digital Foundry’s full video below, provided you have around 15 minutes to spare, or you can scroll on down for our recap.

Fortnite typically runs events or random mixups every few weeks, and this current content drop includes a fan favorite. Star Wars has been heavily factoring into Fortnite‘s event schedule for a while, and now Ashoka Tano, star of Clone Wars/Rebels and her recent titular show, is a playable character/skin.

There’s never been a better time to bring home a PlayStation 5. Right now, people in the U.S. who activate their new PS5 console (either the disc-ready or digital version) before Oct. 20 can get a free game. By the way, that’s in addition to getting Astro’s Playroom, a fun platforming game that’s included with every console.

Whatever happened to CollegeHumor? Fans of the Dropout streaming service will tell you at the drop of a hat: The creatives behind it announced a new subscription service in late 2018, made a few ambitious seasons of comedy and live-play Dungeons & Dragons — and then got walloped when their corporate owner, IAC, stopped funding CH Media, resulting in layoffs of nearly the entire staff in January 2020 (which was a totally chill month to lose your job, with absolutely no major upheavals in television production on the horizon).

Cyberpunk 2077 players have declared open season on Fingers now that update 2.0 has adjusted Ripperdocs.

With all of the Souls series marketing blitzes, it’s easy to forget that yes, From Software produced and released Sekiro, and it ruled. Well, it’s cleaned up quite a bit and managed to achieve the milestone of 10 million units sold worldwide as of September 26, 2023.

To my amazement, this month - September 2023 - marks my 40th year in game development. I’m not sure how I’ve survived so long in a business that more typically burns people out in... somewhat less, let’s just say. That said, I have some thoughts about survival and an urge to tell the story of how I today find myself one of the most long-lived veterans still actively involved in making games. There may be a few older geezers still working, I guess, but most of you who want to chime in with an arthritic “But I’ve been doing this longer than you” or “You’re a young whipper-snapper next to me” are probably big deals on the business side - C-suite types. If you’ve worked more than 40 years and are still actually working with teams to make games, let me know. We can hang out and talk about our lumbago.

Starfield is out now on Xbox Series consoles and PC, but the latest Bethesda RPG is missing a key graphics option that PC users are clamoring for. Nvidia DLSS, which stands for Deep Learning Super Sampling, is upscaling technology that's been a highly-requested feature for Starfield, and it was missing at launch.

Renowned action game developer PlatinumGames has just announced that its co-founder, Hideki Kamiya, will leave the company on October 12.

It seems like everyone is interested in buying the latest iPhone 15 series since its debut on September 12. While Apple only started selling them on September 22, the iPhone 15 has been in high demand with the devices flying off the shelves, with the top-end iPhone 15 Pro Max being sold out until November. But the hype is not limited to just the common folks, it has celebrities and billionaires excited too. Indian actor R. Madhavan recently showed off his latest purchase, the iPhone 15, which has been made in India. Now, Elon Musk says he is also planning to buy Apple's latest iPhone.

The on/off saga of Meteor Lake for desktops has been settled once and for all. It's been confirmed. Meteor Lake will be coming to desktops.

Three years on, Cyberpunk 2077 is finally ready for its close-up. Cyberpunk 2077's one and only planned expansion, Phantom Liberty, releases on Monday, September 25, with a global launch on PC. We loved it, calling it «a thrilling capstone on Cyberpunk 2077's 3-year redemption arc» in our 87% review.

Resident Evil Village is coming to Apple-flavoured smart devices just in time for Halloween on 30th October, 2023.

Have you ever been lost in a song so deeply that you’re transported into another world, a preferred nature spot, or just find peace within the colors and shapes of a painting? Faerie Afterlight has done this for me. Created by the developers, Clay Game Studios, this Indonesian influenced game, with lovely music, folk art and beautiful visuals transported me into what might be the coziest and most chill Metroidvania I have played since both Ori games.

Between 2017 and 2013, the number of smartphone brands out there has dropped by an astounding 500 companies.

If you are attempting September 23rd’s answer and find yourself stuck, you might be in need of some hints. Today’s answer is a bit tricky to decipher and will eventually require you to use clues. However, if you start off with strategic starting words, you might be able to solve it without using hints. But if you are in a precarious situation, then you could switch over to a different mode.

The topic of whether business magnate Elon Musk is truly in Cyberpunk 2077 can finally be put to rest, as a CD Projekt Red developer has confirmed that he definitely isn't.

HoYoverse, the company behind several gacha hits, has announced a follow-up to one in Honkai Impact 3rd Part 2. The next step in Honkai Impact 3rd‘s journey is due to depart in February 2024.

Even in the pre-release review period for Armored Core 6, I didn’t encounter any major bugs. That’s kind of rare in this current AAA landscape, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist! Thankfully, From Software is planning on swiftly addressing some snafus with a variety of patches, and we’re already three updates in at this point.

At Intel Innovation, a two-day event held in San Jose, Calif., the chip maker made official the unveiling of its anticipated "Meteor Lake," its next-generation architecture for client computer processors. We explained, in broad strokes, how Meteor Lake chips, which will debut Dec. 14 under the new Intel Core Ultra brand, are structured, and the general design decisions around the new chips. It's the biggest re-imagining of Intel's processors in decades. But our earlier stories are a mere distillation of many hours of briefings and deep dives, presented by Intel in the run-up to the launch, highlighting the design decisions and the underpinnings of the new silicon.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is getting ready to announce the results of the Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) 2023 for all the interested candidates who took the exam. If you were one of those who took the exam on the scheduled dates, here's what you need to know:

Late last year, the FTC fined Epic Games $520 million for tricking players into buying in-game goods. Some of that money—$245 million—will be used to refund gamers who fell prey to the game's manipulative tactics, and we now have more details about how affected gamers can get their hands on that cash.

Crystal Dynamics, the game development studio best known for its work on the Tomb Raider, Gex, and Legacy of Kain series, confirmed yesterday (Wednesday, September 20) that it has parted ways with 10 employees “due to an internal restructuring”.

Valve announced Counter-Strike 2 in March, and it's one of those delightfully esoteric competitive game sequels that outsiders might look at with tilted heads, wondering what the heck makes it different from the Counter-Strike people are playing now, while folks like resident PC Gamer CS player Rich Stanton dub it their «dream game» because the smoke grenades are different.

Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics has suffered a wave of layoffs just months after insisting that the ongoing staff hemorrhage at parent company Embracer Group wouldn't affect the new Tomb Raider game or the studio's collaboration with The Initiative on the Perfect Dark reboot. 

Now that the chaotic co-op game Party Animals has been released, Steam users have turned their attention to their next most anticipated game: Hades 2. 

Bluey immediately made an impact on the child’s TV scene in 2018, and the world of kids’ programming has never been quite the same. Showrunner Joe Brumm created the show as a result of being tired of poor-quality kids shows flooding the market, and that ethos has served Bluey well. Throughout its three seasons (consisting of over 150 episodes) it’s managed to knock its myriad storylines out of the park, and on occasion, make droves of people cry. I’m skeptical that the upcoming game project will have the same effect on folks, but a dad can dream.

While I've never been sold on Mortal Kombat's theatrical violence and roster design, I've gotta say that Mortal Kombat 1 is rather beautiful. Well, on PC at least. It looks pretty damn good on PlayStation and Xbox, too. Nintendo Switch, however? It, uh, looks like a game alright. If games were total and utter nightmare fuel.

Picture the scene: World of Warcraft‘s spectacular Dragon Isles laid bare beneath your wings as you dragonride through the skies. When approaching the North Sea, sparkling beneath you, you feel that urge to go rogue; to become a menace of the MMORPG‘s high seas. ‘Avast,’ ye ask yerself – ‘where can I find meself a noble beast befitting of a cap’n like me?’ Well, I have the answer: you can get a pirate dragon in the new WoW Dragonflight event – but you’ll have to act fast.

Hold on to your breath folks. Microsoft seriously had a talk about acquiring Nintendo, and we don’t mean 20 years ago. This was a discussion they had as recently as August of 2020.

Major spoiler warning, folks! We're going to be discussing the final moments of Lies of P's story. You've been warned.

Mortal Kombat 1 releases today for those who’ve podded out on the game’s Premium Edition, so you may have been expecting us to publish our PS5 review. Unfortunately, we’ve only just received access to the game, and that means our verdict is going to be a little late. Obviously, we’re eager to thoroughly test out all the features, including the cinematic story mode and new Invasions, so it’s going to take us a little bit of time to work through everything.

A neat little detail about Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has surfaced from a recent developer interview: When you switch between playing as Miles Morales and Peter Parker, you'll still see the Spider-Man you aren't playing as swinging around town doing his Spidey thing.

Larian Studios is investigating reports of Baldur's Gate 3 crashing on PS5 and has a temporary workaround while it figures out a more permanent solution.

You can really hear the exasperation in this terse statement from Konstantin Govorun, head of PR at War Thunder publisher Gaijin Entertainment: «Our moderators quickly nuked the post, deleted the files and banned the user. This is probably 12th time this happens.»

Even if you’ve only just started your fourth Baldur’s Gate 3 play-through, you still might be craving more of the game’s captivating characters. The actors behind those voices have been pretty active on social media, reciting memes in character and what not. Now they’re taking the immersion to a whole new level and joining actual play D&D series High Rollers for a special livestream event.

Apple has released iOS 17 for all iPhone models that support Apple's latest update. The company has implemented various changes throughout the operating system, which include front-facing features and visual upgrades. When Apple announced iOS 17 at its WWDC 2023 event in June, it introduced some pretty major features that will be reserved for future iOS updates. Check out the full changelog if you want to learn what Apple has introduced with the initial iOS 17 build.

Following its announcement in June, a date is in place for the new take on Atari’s Haunted House game. As busy as next month may be, this one is looking to carve a chilling name for itself when it launches on October 12, 2023. Developed by Orbit Studio, the Haunted House revival will be available on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Atari VCS. 

Mortal Kombat 1's Nintendo Switch port is being widely lambasted for its graphics and character models.

After making several memorable appearances in The Wheel of Time season 2’s first four installments, the Prime Video series’ Seanchan invaders finally take center stage in episode 5, “Damane.” They make the most of it, too, showing off everything from their culture and politics to their fashion over the course of the episode’s hour run time. What’s more, “Damane” also hammers home what Wheel of Time’s second season has already made abundantly clear: The Seanchan are a major threat, and one whose motivations hit closer to home than your standard fantasy army with world conquest in its sights.